Thursday, April 1, 2010

Everybody Knows You Have to Read the Manual, LOL!

What I learned in my Digital Photography Class, Part 3

If you are anything like me, when you got your new camera you probably looked at the thick manual and thought to yourself--now, where's that little quick-start guide? I only want to take some photos, for Pete's sake! That's just what I did--figured out just enough to get started and went from there. Along the way, I added bits of information from the big manual when there was something I needed to do but, of course, using that method I didn't know what I didn't know!

The next thing we did in our class, after locating the battery and memory card, was to take a tour of all those little mysterious buttons on the camera. Here are the most memorable buttons and dials we found (you can explore yours some time sitting with your manual and your camera--who knows what you'll find!):

The power switch (ha! I knew this one)

The mode dial: I had used this, sure. I just set it to "automatic," ignoring all the other mysterious modes available (more about these in a later post)

The main dial: Used to set aperture and shutter speed when shooting manually

The depth of field preview button (Who knew!)

Dioptric adjustment knob: I mentioned this in an earlier post. This little knob adjusts the viewfinder image to suit my own vision

A little switch that toggles from AF (auto focus) to MF (manual focus)

There are more, of course, but I want to save them for the next post, which will be on the subject of light.




1 comment:

JC said...

I have to admit .. I only looked at the 'what are these things on the camera and what do they do' page ... like on, off, and wow the lense goes in and OUT ... I got mine in August and I'll have to read the manual or on second thought .. you could educate me (he he he)